Dimensions: support: 1473 x 1829 mm
Copyright: © The estate of Roger Hilton | CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 DEED, Photo: Tate
Editor: Roger Hilton's "Figure, February" is a large, striking painting, full of muted browns and creams. It feels both intimate and distant. What visual symbols resonate with you in this piece? Curator: The fragmented human form speaks volumes. The tension between abstraction and figuration suggests the fragility and incompleteness of memory. Note the color choices, cold blues versus warm browns; what kind of emotional weight do you think Hilton intended to convey with these colors? Editor: Perhaps the blue symbolizes a melancholic past, while the browns represent a grounded present? Curator: Precisely. Color association is subjective, but the interplay here evokes a powerful sense of longing and the persistence of lived experience. Hilton is echoing something primal. Editor: I see how the limited palette emphasizes the emotional depth, linking personal experience with universal themes. Curator: Indeed. We are left contemplating the enduring power of the human form.
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'Figure, February 1962' is one of a number of large, overtly figurative paintings which Hilton began to paint in 1961. When first shown these works provoked dismay and amazement from previous admirers. In the early 1950s turning from figurative imagery to abstraction had been provocative. A decade later, for an abstract painter to paint figurative images seemed equally shocking. Also, the kind of figuration practised by Hilton seemed outrageous. It is not straightforwardly imitative or representational. As in this case, Hilton's figures have an awkwardness which recalls the direct, uninhibited quality of children's art. Yet this is married with a knowing sensuality, and a suggestive eroticism, which contradict any impression of naivety. Gallery label, August 2004
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